Online BWS Retail Trends Q2 2015

Summary A unique project is underway to identify key trends and growth opportunities within the sale of beer, wines and spirits online.

Wilson Drinks Report (“WDR”), who set up and contribute to the WSTA Market Report, are acting as an independent consolidator of online retailer ePOS data from most of the leading specialist online BWS retailers.

Synopsis Why set up the online retail benchmarking project?

Total online sales of beers, wines and spirits are estimated by most commentators to be between £500 million and £1 billion per annum (to put this in perspective, off trade sales of blended scotch whisky are about £800 million pa while rose wine is about £600 million pa).
But there is no reliable, respected source of data on the online BWS market to provide substance to these estimates.
How can online retailers understand how they are performing against their direct competition?
How can producers, wine distributors and other key parties like analysts or generic bodies understand the key trends in the online retail market without reliable, ePOS-based data?

WDR Online BWS Retail Trends

We have prepared a new report using the consolidated ePOS data gathered from most of the leading specialist online BWS retailers.

Where possible, mixed cases of wine have been split out into their respective colour and country of origin.

Whilst individual retailer performance is not shown, the report clearly identifies how the online channel is very different to either the off trade or on trade channels.

The report provides clear evidence on key questions, including :

How did the total market perform?

How big is the total online market?

Is it growing faster than the off trade? If so, by how much?

Which type of red wine sold the most? (country of origin)

What was the average total basket?

How did the price of an average bottle of still wine compare to the off trade? (Hint : it is much higher!)

“The new report from WDR provides new levels of detail about the online market which we haven’t seen before. It is really valuable to be able to compare our performance in key categories against the overall online market.” – Richard Weaver, Ecommerce Director, Majestic Wine Warehouses Ltd.